Marketers warned of the dangers of turning to booze

It seems old habits die hard in the marketing industry after it has been revealed that those who work in the sector regularly turn to drink to de-stress after a tough day at work, second only to financial services professionals, with more women than men knocking back the bevvies.

So says a study carried out by www.totiuss.com, a wellness programme designed to transform women’s relationship with alcohol, designed to determine which professions rely the most on alcohol to de-stress, as well as gain insight into the drinking habits of the UK public.

It found that more than half (54%) of UK adults use alcohol to unwind at the end of the day, while three-fifths (62%) confess to using alcohol as a reward for work success and achievements.

The job sectors within which employees were revealed to be most likely to use alcohol to de-stress were finance, marketing and healthcare, while those who work in beauty, logistics and technology came up the rear.

Women were revealed to be more likely to drink alcohol specifically to de-stress from work than men, according to the research, making up 71% of the total respondents who said that they did.

When those respondents were asked to specify the reasons that they felt caused them to need to de-stress with alcohol, the top answers were revealed to be a heavy workload, long hours, difficult clients or customers, poor management and lack of support.

The poll also revealed that nearly half (47%) of the respondents agreed that there was a drinking culture among their team or at their workplace and 21% of those people felt ‘somewhat pressured’ to drink alcohol on work nights out or at events when they did not necessarily want to.

Carmela Coop-Rodia, co-founder of www.totiuss.com, commented: “Unfortunately, drinking is so normalised in our society, particularly within certain company cultures or professions, and nobody bats an eyelid when you sit down with a glass of wine at the end of the day to unwind.

“However, it can – and quite quickly – be a gateway to a destructive relationship with alcohol that is completely avoidable. One glass of wine after a tough day or week can easily lead to finishing the whole bottle and even on to the next and the impact this has on your mental and physical health can be astounding. What starts with you trying to destress can lead to further low mood, anxiety and have the opposite impact you intended.

“To see that women were more likely to turn to alcohol to destress from work unfortunately came as no surprise to us. One of the reasons our wellness programme is initially aimed at women, is because various studies have shown that women start to have alcohol-related problems sooner and at lower volumes of drinking than men.

“Besides that, us women are regularly told we can have it all; the career, the family, the dream lifestyle and all of the success, but the pressures we face can often leave us using alcohol as a means to cope. All it tends to do is make having it all, all that much harder.”

TOPICS:alcohol data-driven marketing financial services